From the Boing Boing Shop

Popular Posts

Follow Us

John Buckman, the founder of the radical, sharing-friendly, artist-paying label Magnatune, sez,

The Magnatune music service has been transitioning from a "buy album downloads" model to a "DRM-free, all-you-can-eat, pay-what-you-want" model. I believe that Magnatune is the only DRM-free all-you-can eat pay music service.

Today, Magnatune removed all commitment requirements for membership, so that literally you can join for $10 and get access to all Magnatune albums and downloads.

This marks the end of a 3 month experiment, in tandem with Yochai Benkler's research group, to see what effect different prices, pay-what-you-want strategies, and commitments might have on a post-scarcity online music business model.

Kirby Ferguson, who created the remarkable Everything is a Remix series, has a new podcast hosted by the Recreate Coalition called Copy This and he hosted me on the debut episode (MP3) where we talked about copying, creativity, artists, and the future of the internet (as you might expect!).

James Cawley is a 50 year old Elvis impersonator from Ticonderoga, NY; his friend William Ware Theiss was costume-designer for the original Star Trek series, and left Cawley the blueprints for the original Star Trek Enterprise sets in his will — so Cawley rented out a 13,000 sqft shuttered supermarket and built an exquisite replica […]

In much of the world, copyright ends 50 years after the creator’s death, in some of the rest of the world, it ends 70 years after the creator’s death; in the USA, things have stopped going into the public domain until 2019 (unless America decides to retroactively extend copyright…again!).

The Black Friday Mac Bundle 2.0 is one of the Boing Boing Store’s best-selling Mac bundles yet, and it’s about to come to an end. If you don’t get your copy now, here’s what you’ll be missing:This bundle comes packing 9 top-rated Mac apps in one package, at the hugely discounted price of just $23.99. […]

The Boing Boing Store’s Gift Guide is full of ideas for pretty much anyone in your life like hipster ice cub trays, Xbox controllers, Halo Boards, and even diamond necklaces. As always, all products in the Boing Boing Store come at great discounts, too. Shop by price bucket starting at under $20. Under $20:Bloxx Jumbo Ice Trays […]

Unlike traditional lighters, the SaberLight features an electronic plasma beam that’s both rechargeable and butane-free. This sleek lighter is even approved by TSA, so you’ll never be stuck buying lighters you’ll just have to throw away partially used. For some people, like me, this is a pretty big game-changer. The SaberLight’s beam is actually both hotter and cleaner […]

16

Actually, I think jamendo.com may be a DRM-free, all-you-can-eat, pay-what-you-want service that was working before magnatue.com. Rythmbox (one of the default music players on Ubuntu) can stream music from magnatune and jamendo.

Excuse me, I’m going to go pay Magnatune 10 bucks. Let’s see some support for this model. Also, there are some really talented artists on Magnatune. Check out Human Response, for example – that piano teacher rocks the house.

They just got themselves another customer here too. Bought a couple of albums before, but not really trawled around much since. The Braid soundtrack interested me, but it was spread across multiple artists and I didn’t want whole albums. Time for some proper investigating!

It’s an awesome idea, but I’m unclear how they implement the “50% of your membership is paid to the artists you listen to” part. I mean, how do they know what you listened to?

I imagine there’s a special player or interface that they use to track your plays, but I imagine most people don’t listen to music primarily on their computer – they’re using their MP3 player, stereo, car, etc.

Seems like a system where the user is asked to assign points or votes to the artists they like would work better. And if they choose not to assign their points, they could then be distributed according to whatever listening stats the service has.

This would take the participatory, direct nature up another notch, in that consumers with “memberships” would now really be a member, and have an explicit role in deciding how the money is dealt out in the organization they’re a member of. I would imagine the ability to bestow votes on artists would be an additional fun and desirable activity for a lot of people.

Its more the buying part that got me than the anime part. I am under the impression that alot of anime music is created/ripped by the fans, so you would want to get it via torrent networks rather than actually buying it somewhere.

I can’t see that there’s anything to celebrate about Magnatune and similar ventures. Their role is virtually same as conventional labels. They see their job as controlling the spigot through which cultural works flow. How much they charge or whether they charge by the the album, the megabyte, or the month is immaterial. What they are doing is by their own admission shareware culture, not free culture.

It doesn’t make economic sense. They are aiming to subsidise production by charging for distribution, but distribution is no longer a valuable service – anybody can do it at practically zero cost. In order for this to work, they must “ask you to be mindful of our business model and recommend you share no more than one album per friend per month.”

Thanks, but no thanks. “Hey, I found this great new band on Magnatune. But I’ve already shared one album with you this month, so I’ll have to let you hear it in a week and a half.” It’s absurd. If I was a recording artist, I wouldn’t be happy with my record label asking my audience to keep my music to themselves and refrain from promoting my work.

Magnatune’s racket is fundamentally the same as Sony’s: let us get between you and your potential fans, and we’ll cut you in on the action.

Oh, and the cheek of this is astonishing. “Pay what you want“, Buckman claims in bold text, “though there is a $5/month stream membership minimum, and $10/month download membership minimum”.

By this standard everything is “pay what you want”. Nobody’s going to refuse extra money on top of the price they charge. Just because I could give somebody five hundred dollars for a tin of baked beans doesn’t mean that my local supermarket is now operating on a “pay what you want” basis.

It’s uncanny the way that otherwise intelligent people totally suspend their critical faculties and blog about press releases as soon as the magical phrases “Creative Commons” and “DRM-free” are invoked.